Converting Sanskrit PDF to epub

sriniamble · 09-29-2010, 10:40 AM

I have used Calibre to convert a Sanskrit PDF document to epub format. When I open that in Stanza app on my itouch all the Sanskrit characters are rendered gibberish. I hope I have done something wrong. If any of you have tried this successfully then I would appreciate your guidance. I can read the Sanskrit PDF on my itouch using various reader apps (scrolling. sizing, etc. are bit annoying).

ldolse · 09-29-2010, 11:18 AM

Have you checked it in Calibre reader? My suspicion would be that the pdf's you are using have the characters/fonts embedded. Calibre is probably creating the correct output, but without an embedded font. Stanza probably doesn't have access to those characters, so you don't see anything. You would need to use Sigil to embed a font, and even then I'm not certain Stanza is compliant enough to use it.

Then again you could be having encoding problems. All depends on what you really mean by 'gibberish'

Starson17 · 09-29-2010, 11:56 AM

I suspect it's just images of the pages of Sanskrit, not an actual Sanskrit font. If so, this is doubly hard to fix. Images of pages have to be OCR'd, and that's hard enough even for a normal font. I have serious doubts that any OCR program will do Sanskrit. Now if it had been Linear A or Proto-Elamite, it would have been easy

sriniamble · 09-29-2010, 11:58 AM

Thank you very much. You are right about the font being embedded in the PDF. What I meant by gibberish was it comes up as Roman characters with diacritical marks. I will try your suggestion regarding using Caliber reader and also trying sigil.

sriniamble · 09-29-2010, 12:19 PM

Here is how it appears in the Calibre reader.

´ÉÏSÒaÉÉïxÉmiÉzÉiÉÏ

Sorry, I cannot paste the equivalent in Sanskrit here.

Starson17 · 09-29-2010, 01:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sriniamble

Here is how it appears in the Calibre reader.

´ÉÏSÒaÉÉïxÉmiÉzÉiÉÏ

Sorry, I cannot paste the equivalent in Sanskrit here.

That doesn't tell us much. My best guess is that it's OCR'd crud behind images of pages with Sanskrit text. Calibre doesn't do any OCR, so it would have happened previously in the original pdf. Are you looking at images of text, or actual text? Can you select individual characters of Sanskrit text in your pdf? If so, what happens when you copy and paste that selected/copied text into something? If you can select a single word of text, try copying that text and pasting it into the search function of your pdf reader and searching for that selected word. If the pasted text looks like the accented "crud" you posted, and you can search it and find the same Sanskrit in your pdf that you selected, then it's likely to be just OCR'd crud behind images of Sanskrit text.

If none of that made sense, feel free to post it here, or PM a copy to me, and I'll take a look.

sriniamble · 09-29-2010, 01:41 PM

I would like to attach my PDF file to the post. Can you please let me know how to do it?.

sriniamble · 09-29-2010, 04:56 PM

Here is the PDF file I am using as the input.

thrawn_aj · 09-29-2010, 06:41 PM

There are subsets of Baraha fonts (BRH Devanagari Extra) embedded in the PDF. Luckily, these are free fonts. If you'd had embedded subsets that are proprietary fonts, there wouldn't have been much you could have done.

Just search for these fonts and embed them using Sigil and you should be good to go (assuming, as Idolse wrote, that Sigil is cimpliant enough to use embedded fonts). I think it's worth a shot. If you have trouble finding the fonts separately, just install Baraha (it's a free Devanagari wordprocessor that I've used for Marathi in the past

). These fonts come with it.

Note: just to be extra careful, open the pdf on your PC (or Mac

) and go to its properties (the fonts tab). Make a note of all the fonts used that are not standard (as far as I could tell, it's just the one I mentioned above). Download them all and embed them.

ldolse · 09-29-2010, 08:21 PM

Sigil will definitely let you embed fonts - there are some threads over in the Sigil sub-forum on how to do it, and there are plenty of discussions on Mobileread on how to do it. Look for "Three Men and a Boat" to see some examples. What I'm less sure of is Stanza's support for embedded fonts - google searches seem to show there is some level of support, but it's problematic. That said, I would expect Apple iBooks might be better in this respect.

thrawn_aj · 09-29-2010, 11:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ldolse

Sigil will definitely let you embed fonts

Oh Lord, my mind's going on vacation

. This is what I meant to say: "(assuming, as Idolse also noted, that Stanza (not Sigil) is compliant enough to use embedded fonts)". No idea how I ended up writing what I did

Sorry 'bout that

. Yes, Sigil does support embedded fonts - just found that out a couple days ago.

sriniamble · 09-30-2010, 10:00 AM

I appreciate all the responses so far. Here is what I have done so far.

1. I generated the epub version of my PDF using Calibre.
2. When I use the Calibre reader to read the contents the generated cover page keeps the fonts and I can read the text. The body of the book is mostly gibberish.
3. In Sigil also I can read the cover page and the rest is same as in #2.
4. ibook application on my itouch is similar to #2 and #3.

I have not embedded the fonts yet. My question is how come Calibre is generating the cover page keeping the fonts in tact while the body of the book does not keep the fonts?

ldolse · 09-30-2010, 10:15 AM

The cover page uses a pdf library which turns the front page into an image. Not really acceptable for the actual book contents.

Embedding the fonts is key - it won't look like anything until you do that.

sriniamble · 09-30-2010, 03:26 PM

I was getting a bit frustrated trying to embed the fonts. I used Atlantis to generate the epub with embedded fonts. The generated ebook was rendered very well on both Calibre reader and Sigil. The Stanza and ibooks apps were unable to handle the embedded font (Sanskrit characters were all gibberish). I got in touch with Atlantis support team and they mentioned that they were able to read the generated ebook on 'Adobe Digital Editions' and 'Sony reader'. Please let me know if you have any other ideas.

thrawn_aj · 09-30-2010, 11:01 PM

It looks like an Apple problem at this point (not being able to read embedded fonts in epub or something like that). Can you check with them (or the Stanza/ibooks devs) whether Stanza/ibooks supports embedded fonts? Nothing you can do if they don't. Also, see if you can find any other epub readers for your itouch. I'm not an Apple user so I have no idea if this is an OS problem (no fonts other than system fonts allowed) or if it's at the level of the app (i.e. Stanza and iBooks are just deficient in that regard).

Essentially, since the Atlantis team has confirmed that the fonts are embedded properly, since the Sony reader can read it, it is no longer an issue with creating the epub but being able to read it.

09-29-2010, 10:40 AM	#1
sriniamble Junior Member Posts: 7 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2010 Device: itouch	Converting Sanskrit PDF to epub I have used Calibre to convert a Sanskrit PDF document to epub format. When I open that in Stanza app on my itouch all the Sanskrit characters are rendered gibberish. I hope I have done something wrong. If any of you have tried this successfully then I would appreciate your guidance. I can read the Sanskrit PDF on my itouch using various reader apps (scrolling. sizing, etc. are bit annoying).

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09-29-2010, 11:18 AM	#2
ldolse Wizard Posts: 1,337 Karma: 123455 Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Malaysia Device: PRS-650, iPhone	Have you checked it in Calibre reader? My suspicion would be that the pdf's you are using have the characters/fonts embedded. Calibre is probably creating the correct output, but without an embedded font. Stanza probably doesn't have access to those characters, so you don't see anything. You would need to use Sigil to embed a font, and even then I'm not certain Stanza is compliant enough to use it. Then again you could be having encoding problems. All depends on what you really mean by 'gibberish'

09-29-2010, 11:56 AM	#3
Starson17 Wizard Posts: 4,004 Karma: 177841 Join Date: Dec 2009 Device: WinMo: IPAQ; Android: HTC HD2, Archos 7o; Java:Gravity T	I suspect it's just images of the pages of Sanskrit, not an actual Sanskrit font. If so, this is doubly hard to fix. Images of pages have to be OCR'd, and that's hard enough even for a normal font. I have serious doubts that any OCR program will do Sanskrit. Now if it had been Linear A or Proto-Elamite, it would have been easy

09-29-2010, 11:58 AM	#4
sriniamble Junior Member Posts: 7 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2010 Device: itouch	Thank you very much. You are right about the font being embedded in the PDF. What I meant by gibberish was it comes up as Roman characters with diacritical marks. I will try your suggestion regarding using Caliber reader and also trying sigil.

09-29-2010, 12:19 PM	#5
sriniamble Junior Member Posts: 7 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2010 Device: itouch	Here is how it appears in the Calibre reader. ´ÉÏSÒaÉÉïxÉmiÉzÉiÉÏ Sorry, I cannot paste the equivalent in Sanskrit here.

09-29-2010, 01:41 PM	#7
sriniamble Junior Member Posts: 7 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2010 Device: itouch	I would like to attach my PDF file to the post. Can you please let me know how to do it?.

09-29-2010, 06:41 PM	#9
thrawn_aj quantum mechanic Posts: 705 Karma: 483827 Join Date: Aug 2010 Location: NorCal Device: Nook1, Samsung Transform, Nook2	There are subsets of Baraha fonts (BRH Devanagari Extra) embedded in the PDF. Luckily, these are free fonts. If you'd had embedded subsets that are proprietary fonts, there wouldn't have been much you could have done. Just search for these fonts and embed them using Sigil and you should be good to go (assuming, as Idolse wrote, that Sigil is cimpliant enough to use embedded fonts). I think it's worth a shot. If you have trouble finding the fonts separately, just install Baraha (it's a free Devanagari wordprocessor that I've used for Marathi in the past ). These fonts come with it. Note: just to be extra careful, open the pdf on your PC (or Mac ) and go to its properties (the fonts tab). Make a note of all the fonts used that are not standard (as far as I could tell, it's just the one I mentioned above). Download them all and embed them.

09-29-2010, 08:21 PM	#10
ldolse Wizard Posts: 1,337 Karma: 123455 Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Malaysia Device: PRS-650, iPhone	Sigil will definitely let you embed fonts - there are some threads over in the Sigil sub-forum on how to do it, and there are plenty of discussions on Mobileread on how to do it. Look for "Three Men and a Boat" to see some examples. What I'm less sure of is Stanza's support for embedded fonts - google searches seem to show there is some level of support, but it's problematic. That said, I would expect Apple iBooks might be better in this respect.

09-30-2010, 10:15 AM	#13
ldolse Wizard Posts: 1,337 Karma: 123455 Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Malaysia Device: PRS-650, iPhone	The cover page uses a pdf library which turns the front page into an image. Not really acceptable for the actual book contents. Embedding the fonts is key - it won't look like anything until you do that.

09-30-2010, 11:01 PM	#15
thrawn_aj quantum mechanic Posts: 705 Karma: 483827 Join Date: Aug 2010 Location: NorCal Device: Nook1, Samsung Transform, Nook2	It looks like an Apple problem at this point (not being able to read embedded fonts in epub or something like that). Can you check with them (or the Stanza/ibooks devs) whether Stanza/ibooks supports embedded fonts? Nothing you can do if they don't. Also, see if you can find any other epub readers for your itouch. I'm not an Apple user so I have no idea if this is an OS problem (no fonts other than system fonts allowed) or if it's at the level of the app (i.e. Stanza and iBooks are just deficient in that regard). Essentially, since the Atlantis team has confirmed that the fonts are embedded properly, since the Sony reader can read it, it is no longer an issue with creating the epub but being able to read it.

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